My Interview for Enterprise Leadership

A while back I was interviewed by Tom Parish at EnterpriseLeadership.org.  On their site, you will find the following description:

In this podcast, Steve Shapiro, InnoCentive’s vice president of strategic consulting, talks about how InnoCentive’s open innovation model has helped companies solve the most challenging problems.

When the Oil Spill Recovery Institute in Alaska wanted to find out how to pump out the almost solidified oil at the bottom of Prince William Sound from the Exxon Valdez spill, the Institute did not turn to its researchers. Instead they posted a challenge to InnoCentive, an emerging company that specializes in open innovation also called crowdsourcing. According to The New York Times, the Institute paid John Davis, a chemist from Illinois, more than $20,000 for his idea. Davis, an expert on cement, figured that if vibrating cement can keep it from hardening, then a similar concept can be adapted to keep the oil in the tanks from freezing.

Founded in 1998 by three scientists working for Eli Lilly, the major pharmaceutical company, InnoCentive became an independent company in 2001. To date InnoCentive, companies, such as Dow Chemical and Procter & Gamble, and not-for-profits have posted more than 1,000 challenges on InnoCentive. Research areas include everything from business processes to chemistry. Steven Shapiro, InnoCentive’s vice president of strategic consulting, says that today corporations cannot depend on their internal research and development departments to solve their toughest problems. “They need to look at external resources. InnoCentive’s enables these organizations to tap into a global network of 200,000 solvers who enjoy the challenge of competing for a cash reward. Our partnership with the Rockefeller Foundation is helping to solve problems posted by not-for-profits working in poor countries.”

In this podcast, Shapiro explains the reasons for using open innovation to solve tough problems, InnoCentive’s business model for generating revenue, some of InnoCentive’s most successful challenges, the benefits of using InnoCentive, and the challenges this company faces in this economy.

You can listen to (or download) this podcast here.

Is Crowdsourcing Disruptive?

There was an excellent post by Hutch Carpenter on the blogging innovation website.  In the article, he asked the question – “Is Crowdsourcing Disrupting the Design Industry?”  He makes an excellent case for the value (and pitfalls) of crowdsourcing design work.  As readers of this site know, I have used design crowdsourcing on several occasions.

In response to the article, I wrote…

I use crowdsourcing for some of my designs. And I have to admit, I do sometimes feel a little bad. It’s clear some people put a fair amount of thought into their designs. Sadly, there is typically only one winner.

Having said that, as a consultant, no one feels bad for me when I spend days or weeks developing a proposal that does not get awarded to me. We recognize that it is the cost of doing business.

Let’s face it…for some design work, it might be just as fast to develop a rough concept as it would be to develop a compelling proposal. Crowdsourcing can reduce the time and effort involved in selling design services.

And crowdsourcing, when done correctly, can give you (the “Seeker”) benefits that you would not get through conventional means.

Right now I am running a crowdsourcing competition for a design for my Personality Poker cards. The competition has been running for 2 days, and I received some amazing designs. Because I did a blind competition, everyone has to develop their own idea, rather than simply build on the idea of someone else. This is enhancing the level of creativity significantly.

The winner will get follow on work from me in fleshing out the concept and in future design work. [NOTE: The competition is over and I received 32 designs of which a half dozen of them were fantastic]

I used to use eLance (an eRFP site) for design work. But the results were not always great. Plus each designer has to submit a proposal and decide upon a fee. With 99designs, the designer knows the “prize” and can decide if they want to invest any effort at all.

It’s not spec work that is changing the rules. It is access to the masses. Personally, I would prefer to pay for a solution than a proposal.

I do think, if done well, design crowdsourcing can be beneficial to all involved.

Crowdsourcing has the potential to give designers a reach they have not previously had.  Although their cost per design might go up, their cost of acquisition might actually go down. Proposals are a cost of doing business – and you don’t win every proposal.  Spending time/money on finding customers who want the proposal in the first-place is another cost – and you don’t acquire every customer you target.  Mailing marketing materials to potential customers is another real cost.  The list goes on.   The real cost/time associated with marketing/selling design services is not insignificant.

Crowdsourcing allows you to convert your marketing/selling time into design time.  Your only cost is your time to develop the submitted designs.  This feels like a much better use of design resources.

Podcast on The Brain Advantage

Brad Kolar is one of the brightest guys I know.  He and I worked together in Accenture back in the mid-90′s.  He has been a contributor to all of my books.  And now he is the co-author of a fascinating book called “The Brain Advantage. ” I had the privilege of receiving a review copy and loved it so much, I provided an endorsement.

“For years, experts have been teaching leaders so-called soft skills. To date, there has only been anecdotal evidence to support their theories. Finally, The Brain Advantage turns these theories into hard science. Anyone with half a brain would buy copies for their entire organization.”

Recently I interviewed Brad for a podcast.  What you will hear are 40 minutes of fascinating dialogue about the brain, leadership, and innovation.  By better understanding the brain, you can help unleash the full creative potential of your organization.

Stream the interview…

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Or download the mp3

Does Stress Limit Creativity?

Friday I was stuck in New York City.  I wasn’t sure I would ever get out.

The Tri-State area was getting hammered by a snow storm.  I was scheduled to leave at 1PM, hours after the snow began.  The airports were closed. And to make matters worse, earlier in the day, two people were struck by a train on the tracks outside of NYC.

This combination of events caused a ripple of delays throughout the rail system.  In fact, every seat on every train for the next few hours were sold.

Knowing that the ride out of New York’s Penn Station can be crazy on a normal day, I decided to invest the few extra dollars for a first class ticket.  This was perfect as I could wait out the delays in the (relative) comfort of the Acela Lounge.

The board said that the train would be delayed about 90 minutes.  Not too bad considering the circumstances.  Right on time (well, an hour and a half after the scheduled time) the announcement came over the loud speaker.  “Train 2164 is now boarding on track 13 East.”  That was my train.

About a dozen of us exited the lounge and headed for track 13 east.  But the escalator was going up?  How would we go down to the tracks?  We looked around but couldn’t find anyone who knew anything.  After a few minutes, our train disappeared from the board indicating it had departed.  We discovered that it had indeed left without us.

The dilemma was not lost on me:  There were no more seats on any trains until late into the evening.

Most people were furious.  Admittedly, I was a bit amused.  Fortunately I did not need to be in Boston by any particular time, so the delay was an inconvenience, but not the end of the world.

We went back to the lounge to discover that the woman there announced the gate information long after our train arrived.  Other were screaming at the woman and the manager.  There were a lot of angry and stressed-out people trying to get home.

I watched.  I let them do the screaming.  And then I started to think through and investigate the options.

1. I could wait for the next train that day, whenever that might be.  I had plenty of work that I could do while waiting.
2. I could stay over night in a hotel.  There were many friends I did not get to see while I was in the City.  And fortunately I did not have anything pressing the next morning.  All of my business could be conducted via phone.  And I knew rooms were available somewhere in NYC.
3. I could rent a car.  Maybe that wasn’t an option given the chaos, but it was worth investigating.  A quick check via my BlackBerry showed that it might indeed be possible.
4. I could share a taxi with someone to Boston.  There were plenty of taxis available.  Although a taxi might be more expensive, it might only be $100 more than the train, if I shared it with a few other people.  Or maybe I could take a taxi to another city, for example, Stamford, CT and either catch a train from there or rent a car.
5. Hitch hiking was not high on my list, but when “brainstorming” (even with yourself) it is best to keep all options open.
6. Take one of the trains that did not require reservations, but did not guarantee a seat.  Worst case would involved sitting on my luggage for 4 hours.
7. Take a train SOUTH a few stations and then try to catch a train from there.  I do this with hotel elevators sometimes.  If I am going down to the lobby from my room during peak hours, sometimes all of the elevators that stop on my floor are full.  So I will take an elevator UP to the top and then catch it down from there.  Surprisingly, it can be faster.

Anyway, the list goes on.  Because I was relaxed, I was able to consider lots of different options.  While everyone else was stressed out, I got creative.  And it got me thinking…

Does stress kill creativity?

The answer is of course, yes.  I wrote about this in the past in articles on the “Performance Paradox” (this link brings you to the AMA website where the article was published).

Stress causes a reduction in athletic and physical performance (read my article on why Barry Bonds performed 10x worse as he got closer to his 755th home run).

Stress also causes a reduction in intellectual abilities to an even greater degree than the impact on physical abilities.  (A brief anecdote is included in the Performance Paradox article)

But stress has the most profound impact on creativity. Or, as I said in the article…

The more creative the work, the less motivation required to hit peak levels of performance. Studies reveal that creativity diminishes when individuals are rewarded (externally motivated) for doing their work. Why? The desire to achieve the goal overtakes the personal interest in the endeavor. A myopic focus on the outcome overshadows the intellectual stimulation of the process. As a result, risk taking becomes reduced and creativity vanishes.

Goal-orientation is one form of stress.  Missing your train when you have a goal of getting home is certainly another.

How did my story end?  There was a 3PM train leaving at 3:15PM.  The manager simply stamped all of our tickets, allowing us on that train.  Of course, given that the train was previously sold out, that caused other problems.  But I’ll write more about that another time.

What We Don’t Know We Know

Last night I went to a seminar.  On the whiteboard, the seminar leader drew an oft-used framework:

There are things you “know.”  For example, I know I can speak English.

There are things you “know you don’t know.”  I know I can’t speak Chinese.

And there are things you “don’t know you don’t know.”  Obviously I don’t have any examples of this.

But it got me thinking.  There is one dimension that is never mentioned…

There are things you “don’t know you know.”

Inside of organizations, there is so much untapped knowledge.  To combat this, over the past two decades, companies have invested millions of dollars in knowledge management systems.  The objective has been to capture the company’s knowledge.

The problem is, the knowledge management databases usually become so large and unwieldy that they are unusable.  I can attest from experience that these systems often end up becoming digital piles of untapped information.  Finding what you want can be like finding a needle in a haystack.  Or, more accurately, it is like finding a specific needle in a stack of needles.

What’s the solution?

You might call it, “reverse knowledge management.”

Instead of posting knowledge which sits passively in a database waiting for someone to find it, you post your question to your “community” so that it can be answered at the time of need.  Of course, asking the world for an answer to your question is not new.  Yahoo/Google Answers did this a few years back.

But internally, especially when you have already invested in knowledge management systems, the dynamics can be quite different.

If you are using an internal collaboration tool like InnoCentive@Work, you might find that reverse knowledge management is an unintended benefit.  When you have a challenge you want solved, the odds are, someone else within your organization has already solved a similar problem.  But you probably don’t know who knows the solution or where to find the solution.

Sometimes the solution can be sitting in your knowledge management system…and you don’t even know it because it is too difficult to find.

Interestingly, “requests for information” posted on internal collaboration tools are sometimes solved not by the individuals with the expertise, by rather by the knowledge management team.  When a question is posted, the knowledge management team masterfully scours their databases to find a solution.  The advantage of this approach is that those with expertise in navigating the knowledge management systems do what they do best, thus freeing the rest of the organization to focus on what they do best.  And it has the added benefit of breathing new life into your old knowledge management initiatives.

So, what is it that you organization doesn’t know what it already knows?

P.S. I have to admit that I am a bit surprised.  If you Google “reverse knowledge management” (in quotes) you will see that the only place this term is used on the entire internet is in this article.

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